I think among Democrats, Clinton may have a slight overall lead. However, it seems to me that Obama is a more palatable choice for independents. In polls, Obama beats McCain, but Clinton doesn't. On the other hand, just about anything that can come out about Clinton has come out; there are no surprises there. With Obama, there may be issues that come up during the general election that we aren't aware of yet.
On the Republican side, McCain worries me. He seems to be breaking with some of the recent Republican traditions, but I don't see a vision for the country, he seems prone to picking more international fights that we can't afford, and I don't see what he would be doing for the economy. Still, he's a much better choice than Romney or Huckabee.
I won't. In addition, I want other people to make informed choices when they buy something because if lots of people buy iPhones, they become a de-facto standard that we'd be stuck with, just like we're stuck with another technically bad standard that ignorant people bought, namely Windows.
From the fact that the iPod has been out for over 6 years, has never had an (easily) replaceable battery, and still has 80% of the market.
The iPod isn't a phone, so that observation has no bearing on whether removable batteries and storage are important for phones.
"Hard AI" associations are also data mining. But the fact that these associations need to be statistical is clear from the fact that all the inputs (vision, speech) are statistical as well.
Linux is getting a standard for encrypted partitions called LUKS. I would expect that in the next major release of Ubuntu, SuSE, etc. you can plug in an encrypted USB drive and it just works.
Data mining is just a new word for discovering statistical associations in data. Of course, children learn words by learning statistical associations between images and speech sounds; that's pretty much a tautology. I mean, what's the alternative? Divine inspiration? Toddlers running around with dictionaries?
"Velvet ropes"? It's called "jailbreak" for a reason. And the fact that it can be broken doesn't matter: as long as Apple doesn't open up the platform with no strings attached, a lot of important commercial software simply won't get ported.
Only if you don't want it to.
Oh, stop mincing words. The iPhone falls flat on open standards: no Java, no supported OTA SyncML, no supported and documented communications protocols, no supported and documented disk access, etc.
The last 5 years tells us that no one cares.
Really? Where do you get this astounding piece of wisdom?
It's odd that most people are willing to pay $20,000 for a car they drive 30 minutes a day but they aren't willing to spend $400 on a phone that they use all the time.
I have no problem spending $400 on a phone, I have a problem spending it on an iPhone. The iPhone is like a Porsche with a Beetle engine in it, no steering wheel, and an inability to drive it on non-Apple toll roads.
For a smart phone, give me something with a physical keyboard, a wide selection of user-installable apps, Java, 3G, and GPS. There are plenty of those for under $400.
Just remember that the only software this wonderful piece of hardware talks to is Apple's iTunes software, that does it for me. There are plenty of nice media players. They aren't as pretty as the iPod Touch, but they're a lot more versatile.
And for that kind of money you can almost get a Nokia N95, which also comes with GPS, a 3G phone, and tons of applications.
A presidential candidate needs to pick his battles and gets his message clear. If Ron Paul stuck to two or three major issues, he'd be much more electable.
What I find amusing is that the bullets you list aren't even all that moderate. And more funny is that they are EXACTLY what Ron has repeatedly stated he would bring to the table.
I list long-term goals and I'm not running for president anyway. Ron Paul needed to focus on goals that are credible and achievable over the next four years.
everyone remembers it as Reagan because, "well", he really DOES deserve a lot of the credit.
Yes? For what specifically?
What the Republicans have going for them is the Democrats. Hillary Clinton is extremely divisive and likely to alienate large parts of the Democratic base, and attract almost no Republican-leaning voters. Plenty of people will come out to vote against here. Obama's problem is that his draw is mostly from the Democratic faithful, so he too is unlikely to attract too many Republican-leaning voters. He's got a better chance (as there are more Democrats) but it's not a slam dunk. His presence also energizes the part of the Republican party they'd rather not talk about to come out and vote against him.
Yeah, those kinds of irrelevant ad hominems are why we get bad presidents again and again. What about talking about some issues instead?
I don't care whether a president is "divisive" or "likable". I don't care about who the president sleeps with. I care about whether the president is fiscally responsible, improves the economy, improves US reputation and influence in the world, and makes me safer.
Bush was a failure in that regard, and unfortunately, McCain, Romney and Huckabee are promising to follow in his footsteps.
Its what both parties have been doing to us for some time now.
You can't think of this in terms of one party vs. another. US parties are placeholders that are filled with different kinds of politicians and policies over time. It's also not a Democrat vs Republican thing; the important decisions are made during the selection of the candidates, through donations, and then the primaries.
Assuming the democrats win this time around, in 4 to 8 years, you'll be saying the same thing, about the other party, or you'll be an idiot.
There really are good presidents and bad presidents, and Bush is decidedly a bad one: he single-handedly spent hundreds of billions of dollars on a war that has brought us neither security nor wealth.
Its [sure] not what the legacy of 'these people' is.
Well, then you better find out before you support people like Bush again. Budget deficits and economic indicators are a good place to start looking.
People whine and bitch because its not really ALL THAT BAD
It really is all that bad: the nation has stagnated and gone backwards in many ways, and the economic fallout from Bush will be with us for years to come. Bush wasted enormous resources and enormous opportunities.
That statement is stupid beyond imagining. He certainly didn't bring down the USSR by himself...he had help....the Pope's influence in Eastern Europe, the Solidarity trade union in Poland, Margaret Thatcher, the Soviet's own corruption...
The Soviet Union fell apart by itself because its social, economic, and political system was unsustainable and uncompetitive. People like Reagan, Thatcher, and the Pope were just firebrands that happened to have a voice at the right time in history. To Reagan's credit, he didn't screw it up when the opportunity to end the cold war presented itself. But, looking back, Reagan's policies were risky and enormously costly. We can't afford another president like Reagan.
Because even when Barry Goldwater was running, he didn't have the outright hostility to religion
I'm not "hostile" to religion, I just think it should be kept out of politics, because politicians are evidently using claims of religiosity to cover up their corruption and moral failings and bamboozle the religious right.
no bullshit about how the GOP used to eschew religion....this party has had religious enthusiasm since its beginnings
Americans used to do a lot of things: discriminate against blacks, discriminate against Jews, discriminate against Catholics, discriminate against atheists. That doesn't mean we can't overcome these evils.
and projection of American power abroad that you do
I have nothing against the projection of American power in principle; I think it's a good thing, actually. But it's my tax dollars that people like Bush are wasting on ineffective foreign adventures that result in neither prosperity nor security.
If that kind of thing makes you uncomfortable, you need to find another party.
US politics is primarily made by changing the direction of the two major parties, not by picking from a large menu of choices. And it is high time that the Republicans start focusing again on limited government, states rights, individual rights, and market economics, because nobody else is.
We shouldn't let morons like you take over half the political power in this country. The important fight today is for the soul of the Republican party, and people like me aren't going to go away, much as you may want to.
You illustrate the reason why religion should be kept out of politics: people falsely assume that if a candidate professes to be religious, he must have "moral principles". Empirically, there is actually no positive correlation between religion and moral behavior, so from that point as well, religion is not relevant to elections. The danger of having religion in politics is that candidates seem to use religion to cover up a lack of ethics. And politicians do, again and again.
Furthermore, I think anybody who needs an external authority to tell them that they shouldn't kill, steal, or harm others, is morally flawed. Religion can keep morally flawed individuals in check through promises of reward and punishment, and through practice, may instill some compassionate behavior in individuals, but that's not sufficient for a president. So, religion is neither necessary nor sufficient for the level of moral and ethical depth we need to demand from a president.
In the last debate, McCain, Romney, and Huckabee were falling all over each other to claim Reagan's legacy and vowed to follow Reagan's policies. What did Reagan actually leave us? Then-record deficits and an already tarnished image internationally. Bush trumped this by wrecking the budget and the US international reputation even more effectively. In addition, both were championing ever more intrusive government. At least Reagan presided over the fall of the Soviet Union, although he can hardly take a lot of credit for that.
The Republicans should return to their roots: fiscal conservatism and personal liberties.
What does that mean? It means:
stop wasting trillions of dollars on wars
stop intruding in people's bedrooms
stop bringing Christianity into government and politics
stop subsidizing inefficient modes of transportation (cars, airplanes) and let the market decide
remove trade barriers
stop propping up the US dollar; let it float in order to create jobs and reduce the tade deficit
make legal, skilled immigration into the US easier
recognize that liberty and perfect safety are incompatible
stop fear mongering and stop promising that you can make people safe
McCain, Romney, and Huckabee aren't Republicans, they are people that are using religion and resumes to hijack the Republican party for their own ends. Ron Paul is closest to what Republicans ought to be, unfortunately, he doesn't temper his view of government with what is realistically achievable.
What the country needs is a moderate version of Ron Paul.
It's FUD just like the anti-global warming FUD they have been peddling for the last 20yrs.
How does claiming that global warming is not occurring spread "fear, uncertainty, and doubt"? FUD isn't even necessarily false. You really need to watch your terminology for corporate marketing misdeeds. Abiotic oil and anti-global warming are marketing lies, not FUD. (Actually, deep abiotic oil seems plausible to me, but may not be of any economic relevance.)
I'd love to hear if biologists have found evidence for a widely shared mechanism for ice-tolerance that speaks to a frozen beginning.
Bacteria have pretty efficient genomes; any such mechanisms would have been long lost in descendants that don't live in the ice.
Unless the Earth experienced a 100% ice-free period,
It probably did, but not even that is necessary: even if there had always been polar ice caps, there is no region where ice has survived permanently. Therefore, any of the original ice dwelling organisms would have had to pass through a soup of warm-adapted organisms. Any ancient ice adapted organisms probably just either died or got eaten.
Correction: The chart you posted shows MSN *making* $77m.
That's the 2004 chart. In 2004, they made $77m, in 2006, they lost $77m.
You can see why Microsoft feels it can be aggressive. They're in great financial shape, all things considered.
I think Microsoft is being aggressive because every effort they have started to make a big business out of things other than Windows and Office has failed, despite throwing huge sums of money at it. And with Vista being such a dud and their loss of ability to control the Office formats, even the long term health of their core business is in question.
I'm not sure I'd call those campaigns "successful". All three of them were due to major political screwups on the part of the US, and they were all disproportionately expensive.
Microsoft spending $44bn on Yahoo! is such a bad idea for Microsoft that I really hope the deal goes through. I feel a little sad for Yahoo!, but I think they're in trouble anyway, and they are getting plenty of money out of it. And I don't think the deal "undervalues" Yahoo!; I think it's pretty much downhill from here on for Yahoo! no matter what.
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I think among Democrats, Clinton may have a slight overall lead. However, it seems to me that Obama is a more palatable choice for independents. In polls, Obama beats McCain, but Clinton doesn't. On the other hand, just about anything that can come out about Clinton has come out; there are no surprises there. With Obama, there may be issues that come up during the general election that we aren't aware of yet.
On the Republican side, McCain worries me. He seems to be breaking with some of the recent Republican traditions, but I don't see a vision for the country, he seems prone to picking more international fights that we can't afford, and I don't see what he would be doing for the economy. Still, he's a much better choice than Romney or Huckabee.
What's the relationship between TrueCrypt and LUKS? LUKS seems to be the new standard for encrypted partitions under Linux.
Also, TrueCrypt is open source and seems quite mature; why isn't it part of Ubuntu? Are there license issues? Technical issues? Political issues?
Then don't fucking buy one.
I won't. In addition, I want other people to make informed choices when they buy something because if lots of people buy iPhones, they become a de-facto standard that we'd be stuck with, just like we're stuck with another technically bad standard that ignorant people bought, namely Windows.
From the fact that the iPod has been out for over 6 years, has never had an (easily) replaceable battery, and still has 80% of the market.
The iPod isn't a phone, so that observation has no bearing on whether removable batteries and storage are important for phones.
"Hard AI" associations are also data mining. But the fact that these associations need to be statistical is clear from the fact that all the inputs (vision, speech) are statistical as well.
Linux is getting a standard for encrypted partitions called LUKS. I would expect that in the next major release of Ubuntu, SuSE, etc. you can plug in an encrypted USB drive and it just works.
Data mining is just a new word for discovering statistical associations in data. Of course, children learn words by learning statistical associations between images and speech sounds; that's pretty much a tautology. I mean, what's the alternative? Divine inspiration? Toddlers running around with dictionaries?
oh? A velvet rope is not lock down.
"Velvet ropes"? It's called "jailbreak" for a reason. And the fact that it can be broken doesn't matter: as long as Apple doesn't open up the platform with no strings attached, a lot of important commercial software simply won't get ported.
Only if you don't want it to.
Oh, stop mincing words. The iPhone falls flat on open standards: no Java, no supported OTA SyncML, no supported and documented communications protocols, no supported and documented disk access, etc.
The last 5 years tells us that no one cares.
Really? Where do you get this astounding piece of wisdom?
for example?
Many of Nokia's Series 60 phones.
Mine is named Sammy.
You mean like this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vWm47yPLGc
It's odd that most people are willing to pay $20,000 for a car they drive 30 minutes a day but they aren't willing to spend $400 on a phone that they use all the time.
I have no problem spending $400 on a phone, I have a problem spending it on an iPhone. The iPhone is like a Porsche with a Beetle engine in it, no steering wheel, and an inability to drive it on non-Apple toll roads.
For a smart phone, give me something with a physical keyboard, a wide selection of user-installable apps, Java, 3G, and GPS. There are plenty of those for under $400.
Just remember that the only software this wonderful piece of hardware talks to is Apple's iTunes software, that does it for me. There are plenty of nice media players. They aren't as pretty as the iPod Touch, but they're a lot more versatile.
And for that kind of money you can almost get a Nokia N95, which also comes with GPS, a 3G phone, and tons of applications.
Smart people can still go to smart consultants, it's up to them.
Also: the amount of medical care people need is vastly overrated.
* Most money is spend on medical care during the last six months of life.
* Most of the problems that require serious interventions are fairly obvious (broken bones, etc.) and are not that expensive.
* Most of the costly conditions are due to lifestyle (obesity, lack of exercise, alcoholism, etc.) and are under each individual's control.
I feel sorry for others though. I'm a scientist and have good research skills. People shouldn't have to be forced to do their own medical care.
Why not? Think of it as evolution in action.
Wouldn't it be great if drugs (medical and otherwise) were legalized and stupid people would remove themselves from the gene pool automatically?
We still need surgeons: operating on oneself is mechanically tricky, but for the rest, let everybody care for themselves.
A presidential candidate needs to pick his battles and gets his message clear. If Ron Paul stuck to two or three major issues, he'd be much more electable.
What I find amusing is that the bullets you list aren't even all that moderate. And more funny is that they are EXACTLY what Ron has repeatedly stated he would bring to the table.
I list long-term goals and I'm not running for president anyway. Ron Paul needed to focus on goals that are credible and achievable over the next four years.
Of course it does. I'm asking you to reconsider voting for the likable candidate over the smart candidate.
everyone remembers it as Reagan because, "well", he really DOES deserve a lot of the credit.
Yes? For what specifically?
What the Republicans have going for them is the Democrats. Hillary Clinton is extremely divisive and likely to alienate large parts of the Democratic base, and attract almost no Republican-leaning voters. Plenty of people will come out to vote against here. Obama's problem is that his draw is mostly from the Democratic faithful, so he too is unlikely to attract too many Republican-leaning voters. He's got a better chance (as there are more Democrats) but it's not a slam dunk. His presence also energizes the part of the Republican party they'd rather not talk about to come out and vote against him.
Yeah, those kinds of irrelevant ad hominems are why we get bad presidents again and again. What about talking about some issues instead?
I don't care whether a president is "divisive" or "likable". I don't care about who the president sleeps with. I care about whether the president is fiscally responsible, improves the economy, improves US reputation and influence in the world, and makes me safer.
Bush was a failure in that regard, and unfortunately, McCain, Romney and Huckabee are promising to follow in his footsteps.
Its what both parties have been doing to us for some time now.
You can't think of this in terms of one party vs. another. US parties are placeholders that are filled with different kinds of politicians and policies over time. It's also not a Democrat vs Republican thing; the important decisions are made during the selection of the candidates, through donations, and then the primaries.
Assuming the democrats win this time around, in 4 to 8 years, you'll be saying the same thing, about the other party, or you'll be an idiot.
There really are good presidents and bad presidents, and Bush is decidedly a bad one: he single-handedly spent hundreds of billions of dollars on a war that has brought us neither security nor wealth.
Its [sure] not what the legacy of 'these people' is.
Well, then you better find out before you support people like Bush again. Budget deficits and economic indicators are a good place to start looking.
People whine and bitch because its not really ALL THAT BAD
It really is all that bad: the nation has stagnated and gone backwards in many ways, and the economic fallout from Bush will be with us for years to come. Bush wasted enormous resources and enormous opportunities.
That statement is stupid beyond imagining. He certainly didn't bring down the USSR by himself...he had help....the Pope's influence in Eastern Europe, the Solidarity trade union in Poland, Margaret Thatcher, the Soviet's own corruption...
The Soviet Union fell apart by itself because its social, economic, and political system was unsustainable and uncompetitive. People like Reagan, Thatcher, and the Pope were just firebrands that happened to have a voice at the right time in history. To Reagan's credit, he didn't screw it up when the opportunity to end the cold war presented itself. But, looking back, Reagan's policies were risky and enormously costly. We can't afford another president like Reagan.
Because even when Barry Goldwater was running, he didn't have the outright hostility to religion
I'm not "hostile" to religion, I just think it should be kept out of politics, because politicians are evidently using claims of religiosity to cover up their corruption and moral failings and bamboozle the religious right.
no bullshit about how the GOP used to eschew religion....this party has had religious enthusiasm since its beginnings
Americans used to do a lot of things: discriminate against blacks, discriminate against Jews, discriminate against Catholics, discriminate against atheists. That doesn't mean we can't overcome these evils.
and projection of American power abroad that you do
I have nothing against the projection of American power in principle; I think it's a good thing, actually. But it's my tax dollars that people like Bush are wasting on ineffective foreign adventures that result in neither prosperity nor security.
If that kind of thing makes you uncomfortable, you need to find another party.
US politics is primarily made by changing the direction of the two major parties, not by picking from a large menu of choices. And it is high time that the Republicans start focusing again on limited government, states rights, individual rights, and market economics, because nobody else is.
We shouldn't let morons like you take over half the political power in this country. The important fight today is for the soul of the Republican party, and people like me aren't going to go away, much as you may want to.
You need to find another party, not me.
You illustrate the reason why religion should be kept out of politics: people falsely assume that if a candidate professes to be religious, he must have "moral principles". Empirically, there is actually no positive correlation between religion and moral behavior, so from that point as well, religion is not relevant to elections. The danger of having religion in politics is that candidates seem to use religion to cover up a lack of ethics. And politicians do, again and again.
Furthermore, I think anybody who needs an external authority to tell them that they shouldn't kill, steal, or harm others, is morally flawed. Religion can keep morally flawed individuals in check through promises of reward and punishment, and through practice, may instill some compassionate behavior in individuals, but that's not sufficient for a president. So, religion is neither necessary nor sufficient for the level of moral and ethical depth we need to demand from a president.
The Republicans should return to their roots: fiscal conservatism and personal liberties.
What does that mean? It means:
McCain, Romney, and Huckabee aren't Republicans, they are people that are using religion and resumes to hijack the Republican party for their own ends. Ron Paul is closest to what Republicans ought to be, unfortunately, he doesn't temper his view of government with what is realistically achievable.
What the country needs is a moderate version of Ron Paul.
It's FUD just like the anti-global warming FUD they have been peddling for the last 20yrs.
How does claiming that global warming is not occurring spread "fear, uncertainty, and doubt"? FUD isn't even necessarily false. You really need to watch your terminology for corporate marketing misdeeds. Abiotic oil and anti-global warming are marketing lies, not FUD. (Actually, deep abiotic oil seems plausible to me, but may not be of any economic relevance.)
How does an inorganic origin counter peak oil?
Because there would likely be a lot more oil in very deep deposits that haven't even been looked at.
No matter where it comes from, there's going to be a point where we've exhausted the deposits we can reasonably get access to.
Not necessarily. In fact, one problem with inorganic oil is that we can probably keep burning it until we run out of oxygen entirely.
I'd love to hear if biologists have found evidence for a widely shared mechanism for ice-tolerance that speaks to a frozen beginning.
Bacteria have pretty efficient genomes; any such mechanisms would have been long lost in descendants that don't live in the ice.
Unless the Earth experienced a 100% ice-free period,
It probably did, but not even that is necessary: even if there had always been polar ice caps, there is no region where ice has survived permanently. Therefore, any of the original ice dwelling organisms would have had to pass through a soup of warm-adapted organisms. Any ancient ice adapted organisms probably just either died or got eaten.
Correction: The chart you posted shows MSN *making* $77m.
That's the 2004 chart. In 2004, they made $77m, in 2006, they lost $77m.
You can see why Microsoft feels it can be aggressive. They're in great financial shape, all things considered.
I think Microsoft is being aggressive because every effort they have started to make a big business out of things other than Windows and Office has failed, despite throwing huge sums of money at it. And with Vista being such a dud and their loss of ability to control the Office formats, even the long term health of their core business is in question.
I'm not sure I'd call those campaigns "successful". All three of them were due to major political screwups on the part of the US, and they were all disproportionately expensive.
Microsoft spending $44bn on Yahoo! is such a bad idea for Microsoft that I really hope the deal goes through. I feel a little sad for Yahoo!, but I think they're in trouble anyway, and they are getting plenty of money out of it. And I don't think the deal "undervalues" Yahoo!; I think it's pretty much downhill from here on for Yahoo! no matter what.